League of Prizren

The League of Prizren was a reactionary political party in Albania that existed from 1877 to 1881. The party, which was founded by 44 Albanian beys, espoused Albanian nationalism and sought to unite all ethnically-Albanian areas under one Ottoman vilayet, rather than allow for Serbia and Montenegro to control Albanian lands. The 1878 Kararname decree stated that the league's goals were to maintain Ottoman control over the Balkans and to struggle to defend the wholeness of Albanian territories, and the organization would later become a revolutionary nationalist organization that opposed Ottoman and Serb rule alike. In 1881, the Sublime Porte sent Dervish Turgut Pasha's 10,000-strong Ottoman army into Kosovo to crush the league, and the resistance was crushed at Ulcinj. The leaders of the league were arrested and deported, with their families suffering similar fates.